


Improvements

by Janice_Lester



Category: Star Trek RPF
Genre: M/M, Piercings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-18
Updated: 2012-09-18
Packaged: 2017-11-26 19:51:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,617
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/653826
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Janice_Lester/pseuds/Janice_Lester
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Chris tries to get Zach to notice just how awesome his piercing looks.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Improvements

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the "piercings/needleplay" square on my second 2012 [](http://kink-bingo.dreamwidth.org/profile)[kink_bingo](http://kink-bingo.dreamwidth.org/) card. Features (non-graphic) body piercing. Beta'd by [](http://vee-dub.livejournal.com/profile)[vee_dub](http://vee-dub.livejournal.com/).

The first one isn’t real. It’s a lip ring, for a role. It looks good, looks real enough, but it’s kinda uncomfortable without having the upside of Chris actually being allowed to, you know, _enjoy it_. He’s had to train himself out of licking at it or risk the wrath of the make-up ladies. Little known fact: Chris Pine suffers occasional nightmares about rampaging make-up ladies. But, anyway, he sends Zach a stupid iPhone photo of himself with the lip ring on set. He’s not sure what he’s expecting. A lot of the shit he sends Zach doesn’t even merit a response (not that he’s that great a correspondent himself).

 _~hot,~_ Zach texts back. _~though rather public. transformation. definite allure~_

Chris stares at his phone for quite a while, thinking. Okay, scratch that, gloating over the fact that Zach thinks he’s pretty with holes in him. Even if they’re fake holes. In public places.

Copious imaginary butterflies take up residence in his stomach as he Gets an Idea. Then he gets distracted wondering how you say ‘butterflies in one’s stomach’ in French, and whether it would sound like, you know, small fluffy dogs to an English-speaker. Dogs in your stomach, no matter how small and fluffy, would seem to connote a much greater degree of anxiety than mere insects. Though insects in the stomach isn’t really such a great image, is it?

Not for the first time, Chris considers the possibility that he is an idiot, or an asshole, or one of the lucky SOBs at the intersection of those two circles on the Venn diagram. Then he gets called back to the trailer to have his hair adjusted again (the director wants it twenty percent more spiky, apparently) and loses his train of thought.

***

Zach stares at his naked, hole-free lip all through Saturday brunch. Well, okay, it’s not like that’s where his attention is every single second, but it’s there enough that Chris notices. It makes him feel funny, makes him oddly aware of Zach’s own lips as he sips his coffee, delicately cradling the small cup in his big hands.

***

The second one is for real, and it freaking hurts. They use this cold spray stuff that is supposed to numb the area, but if you ask Chris it just makes you extra aware of it because the cold stuff is so horrible that it’s hard to imagine yourself, say, lazing on a beautiful beach somewhere instead of waiting around for a guy to stick a needle through your innocent unsuspecting left nipple.

He’s maybe kinda a bit of a baby about it, but the guy doing the piercing says he’s seen all sorts of reactions and it’s nothing to be ashamed of.

It’s done _really_ fast, though, he just takes a big breath as instructed and it’s done on the exhale. And afterwards, when it’s over, Chris is on such a freaking high it’s like, beyond his power to describe coherently. He’s hot all over, can feel the sweat all up the back of his neck and along his spine, and he’s even a little hard despite the pain. Feels like he was just declared the victor in a planetary sex-god-genius competition or something. Triumphant, yeah, that’s it.

Putting his shirt back on hurts a little, and the rub of the fabric over his dressing makes him hyper aware of it. He’s glad they gave him the safety stuff to read before he got in the chair, because he’s really not doing such a good job listening to the post-piercing how-not-to-die-from-tragic-nipple-infection lecture. He smiles and pays and wanders back out into the sunshine. He has a strange desire to dance and buy jeans and go out for noodles.

He makes an executive decision to do all those things.

***

“You’re in a good mood,” Zach says, absently bending sideways to accommodate Noah’s demands for a pat. “Not such a scandalous wrap party last night, I take it?”

As casually as he can manage, Chris strips off his white t-shirt and reaches for his workout tank. It’s been weeks, he’s done some healing, and it is time for The Revelation. “Just because you’re an infamous intermittent lush doesn’t mean we all are.”

“Oh, Christopher, you merely wish you were as lush as me.” He runs his hands over his purely imaginary curves.

To his disappointment, Chris succeeds in getting the new shirt on without any comment from Zach. He’ll have to try harder, evidently. Perhaps invest in flashier jewellery (there are _whole websites_ of the stuff, man, just waiting to help him bling up), since it appears that his shiny new gold segment ring is too subtle. He steps into his sneakers, bends down to tie the laces. Straightens up just in time to avoid a friendly face-lick from the Noah man. “Okay, so, you game for this run? Or shall we go raid a lingerie store, does your lush figure need more support?”

“Oh, we’re game, aren’t we, Noah? Catch us if you can, California Ken.”

Chris assures himself that Zach’s getting a head start out the door has nothing to do with any perfectly natural preening that may or may not have resulted from being compared to Barbie’s totally ripped toy boy.

***

On Sunday, Chris helps Zach wash the dog precisely so he can arrange a little hosepipe accident to turn his t-shirt all gloriously clingy and transparent. He’s got a captive bead ring with spikes that he’s confident will both show and be impossible to resist remarking on.

Zach merely mutters something about please not using the handy Noah towels when there are plenty of people towels in the bathroom, and continues methodically massaging special doggy shampoo into the fur of Noah’s left flank.

***

Okay, so it’s not really subtle that he arranges to emerge from the shower clad only in a towel just as Zach is letting himself in the door with the provisions for their Scrabble game. But what the hey, the acting profession kinda teaches a guy to be brazen, right?

“Why, Mister Pine, is it casual Friday and no one told me?” Zach’s eyebrows are doing that thing Chris is pretty sure Leonard Nimoy taught him in some secret Spock succession ceremony.

“You’re early.” He looks at the clock and does his best double-take. “Or not. Uh, give me a minute.” And he moseys on back to his room to pull on some clothes, hoping Zach will, you know, ask him about his awesome bodily enhancement over Scrabble and lattes.

***

Zach doesn’t.

Chris mopes.

***

Okay, so brazen hasn’t worked, and casual hasn’t worked, so what does that leave? Chris ponders, reclining on a floaty thingy in a friend’s pool surrounded by people who _have_ noticed the nipple ring and made remarks ranging from the snide to the high-five-ish. What does he have to do to get Zachary Quinto to acknowledge his newfound interest in body piercing?

In the end, when the tingle of incipient sunburn has driven him out of the pool and into the house, he texts more or less that exact question to the man himself. And drums loudly on the nearest flat surface for the six minutes (but who’s counting?) it takes Zach to respond.

_~oh, that old thing? would be rude to draw attention to it, what with you taking such pains to keep it secret~_

There follows a conjunction of special characters Chris is pretty sure is meant to denote Zach poking his tongue out at him.

Chris is only briefly distracted by the thought of getting a tongue stud. It really wouldn’t be the best career move.

***

“So, do I get to admire it?” Zach asks, his voice low and somehow dangerous, as he’s shutting his front door behind Chris.

There isn’t, Chris finds, enough time to devise an answer before Zach has him thrust up against a wall, pinned there with his body and his gaze, staring him right in the face as he slowly, without looking, starts pulling up the hem of Chris’s t-shirt. Gooseflesh rises, and he’s suddenly very aware of both his nipples. And his dick. There is, um, some widespread rearrangement of his bodily blood supply. Which might be why it seems like such a good idea to grab Zachary Quinto by the ears and kiss him senseless. If that’s possible, but, whatever, Chris means to find out.

Their mouths press and slide, urgent, a little awkward, and Zach makes the teeniest, tiniest, whiffliest little noise ever, and the sound of it makes Chris squirm like his skin is too tight, like he wants—

A warm palm settles over his metal-impaled nipple and presses. Just that, it presses gently. Chris shudders, hips bucking. He’s not the only one hard.

Zach breaks the kiss, mouths along Chris’s jaw instead, and around, close to his ear. And _fuck_ , the man smells good.

“Someone’s been naughty,” Zach breathes. The way he nibbles Chris’s ear ought to be funny or silly, but it really really isn’t. “I think you should go to my room.”

Chris nods several times, and manages to have only one slight collision with a wall in his haste to comply.

***

The next one is Zach’s choice. He takes his sweet time deciding, thinks about it for, like, a month, until the waiting and the guessing is driving Chris nuts.

He’d only be exaggerating slightly if he said getting this one was agony.

But it’s good. The mere sight of it puts this wonderful wild look in Zach’s eyes like Chris thinks you might see on a tiger right before he gobbles you up. It is one hundred percent completely worth it.

And it’s definitely not public.

 

***END***


End file.
